Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

How to Connect With Your Local Audience Using Pinterest

Pinterest may lack the targeting tools of some of the other social media platforms but that doesn't mean you should discount it as a resource for communicating with your customers. With its inherently visual nature and more than 100 million active subscribers, Pinterest is a user-friendly and cost-effective addition to your marketing toolkit — especially for connecting with your local customer base.

After you read the following excerpt, check out Social Media Examiner's complete walk-through of creating a local Pinterest strategy, including some additional suggestions for reaching out.

Map Your Locations With Place Pins

Place pins allow you to add location information to your pins. This information can include your address, phone number, and store hours.

Some pinners use place pins to save dream vacations, but increasing numbers of people are saving place pins of brands and locations they love. This information can be a huge asset to local businesses that are trying to increase foot traffic or connect with local audiences. Place pins show up on a virtual map and provide local users with all of the necessary information to come visit you in person.

When users click on your place pin, they’ll be able to see your location on a map. By having a place pin of your store saved in Pinterest’s database, it will also show up when Pinterest shows users pins of the local area they’re searching in.

Users can see where they are in relation to your business, as well as other place pins from the same area. You can create a designated “place board” and open it to all of your followers, allowing them to pin their place images with location information. This is a great way to get more engagement and boost user-generated content in the process.

Collaborate With Other Local Businesses on a Group Board

Pinterest allows you to create guest boards with other users. Brands often invite industry influencers to contribute to guest boards, adding authority to their content and bringing in new followers. To connect with local audiences, however, it’s best to team up with other local businesses.

Guest boards have a gray silhouettes icon to the right of the board title. Suppose you have a local boutique fitness class (like yoga, barre, cycling, etc.). You could create a guest board with a local athletic wear store, sharing your favorite exercises while wearing the other brand’s athletic clothes. This information is relevant to both brands’ audiences and is positioned to perform well on Pinterest (women’s fashion and fitness are big categories). Plus, sharing audience members could help you both and fosters a feeling of community, which can increase customer loyalty and trust. To start a guest board, simply add the other local business’s profile as a collaborator when creating a new board.

Try to keep guest boards focused and create a new one for each local business you work with (for example, promote workout-friendly recipes from a local vegan restaurant on another guest board).— Ana Gotter, via Social Media ExaminerContinue reading the original article

Kate Seat is a former copywriter at MBS. When away from work, she’s either creating one-of-a-kind art dolls, reading or watching way too much tv with her husband, daughter and an irritable chinchilla named Klaus.

Article comments

Subscribe for updates

Most popular posts

Most popular topics

Contact MBS Textbook Exchange, LLC

Customer Service800-325-0530cserv@mbsbooks.com

Order Processing800-325-0577

Stay Connected With Us

As MBS’ signature publication, Foreword Online is dedicated to offering daily industry insight and cutting-edge news that keep college retailers ahead of the curve. Follow us on social media. Contact us with ideas and feedback. Subscribe for regular updates.